enlarge-imageTravel Routes in BrittanyTravel Routes in Brittany
Travel Routes in Brittany
Distances of themselves are not great in Brittany. From St. Malo to Nantes is but 180 kilometres; from Laval to Brest but 337 kilometres;and from Nantes to Brest is but 324 kilometres.
In these days of motor-cars and even bicycles, these distances are not great, and so long as they are not taken at a rush,—which forbids enjoyment,—they form no drawback to the pleasures of travel by road in Brittany. One has only to add two or three hundred kilometres more, in order to reach the starting-points of Nantes, Laval, or St. Malo from Paris. Then the tour may seem a lengthy one; but even this is nothing to find fault with; the intermediate country is in itself delightful, whether one journeys down through the Orleanais, Touraine, and Anjou, or westward through the heart of Normandy.
The railways in Brittany, except on some of the cross-country routes, are developed to a high stage of efficiency. The great express lines of the Western Railroad to St. Malo and to Brest run due west from Paris, straight almost as the crow flies. Again, one may make his entry via Nantes and the Loire valley through Touraine and Anjou by the Orleans line, and have the satisfaction of setting out from Paris by the world’s finest and most modern railway station, that wonderfully convenient and artistic structure on the Quay of Orsay.
Rennes is the great railway centre of Brittany, and accordingly all roads lead to Rennes. Here one may make up his itinerary at a price which will include nearly every place west of that point for a matter offrcs.65 for first-class, andfrcs.50, second-class, and if he tell the clerk of the booking-office at his point of departure for Rennes that he intends doing this (and agrees with the formalities) he will get a discount of forty per cent, on the price of first or second class tickets up to that point. A plan of this itinerary and further particulars are given in the appendix.
Third-class railway travel in Brittany ought to form one of the long-remembered experiences of one’s visit to that province.
There is much amusement to be got out of a journey across Brittany from St. Malo to Nantes, with mob-capped peasant-folk and blue-bloused and picturesque farmers, all laden with huge baskets and bundles, and an occasional live fowl, or perhaps a rabbit, or even a guinea-pig, though one must not believe that Frenchmen eat guinea-pigs. The writer, at least, never saw one being eaten, though what use they are really put to is an open question.
Occasionally there will be a want of elbow-room in a third-class carriage, but this is nogreat inconvenience, as the Breton mostly travels short distances only, and at the next station one may be left alone with only a drowsy Breton sailor—off on a furlough from a man-of-war—to keep him company, with his red-knobbed tam-o’-shanter rakishly over one ear.
Often aforeignerwill throw himself into one’s compartment,—an American or an English artist, with his sketching paraphernalia, white umbrella and all,—for artist-folk are mostly of the genus who travel third-class. Good-naturedly enough, if his journey be a long one, he will tell you much of the country round about, for your artist is one who knows the byways as well as the highways—and perhaps a little better. By this procedure, one stands a chance of gathering information as well as being edified and amused.
THEspeech of Brittany, like its legend and folk-lore, has ever been a prolific subject with many writers of many opinions.
The comparison of the speech of the Welshman with that of the Breton has often been made, but by no one so successfully as by Henri Martin, the historian, who, in writing of his travels in Wales, told how he had chatted with the Celtic population there and made himself thoroughly understood through his knowledge of Breton speech.
In its earliest phases, the Breton tongue had a literature of its own, at least a spoken literature, coming from the mouths of its bards and popular poets. In our own day, too, Brittany has its own songs and verses, which, though many of them have not known the medium of printer’s ink, have come down from past generations.
The three ancient Armorican kingdoms orstates, Domnonée, Cornouaille, and the Bro-Waroch, had their own distinct dialects.
There is and was a considerable variation in the speech throughout Brittany, though it is and was all Breton. The dialects of Vannes, Quimper, and Tréguier are the least known outside their own immediate neighbourhood; the Léonais of St. Pol de Léon is the regular and common tongue of all Bas Bretons.
The old-time limits of the Breton tongue are wavering to-day, and from time to time have drawn appreciably toward the west, so that the boundary-line, which once ran from the mouth of the Loire to Mont St. Michel, now starts at the mouth of the Vilaine, and finishes at a point on the northern coast, a little to the westward of St. Brieuc.
It was during the decadence of the Breton tongue—known to philologists as the third period—that the monk Abelard cried out: “The Breton tongue makes me blush with shame.”
The nearer one comes to Finistère, the less liable he is to meet the French tongue unadulterated. The numbers knowing the Breton tongue alone more than equal those who know French and Breton, leaving those who know French alone vastly in the minority. The figuresseem astonishing to one who does not know the country, but they are unassailable, nevertheless.
enlarge-imageSt. Pol de LéonSt. Pol de Léon
St. Pol de Léon
Here in this department at least, and to a lesser degree in the Côtes du Nord and the Morbihan provinces, one is likely enough to hear lisped out, as if it were the effort of an Englishman: “Je na sais pas ce que vous dîtes,” or “Je n’entend rien.” No great hardship or inconvenience is inflicted upon one by all this, but now and again one wishes he were a Welshman, for the only foreigners who can understand the lingo are Taffy’s fellow country-men.
Breton legend is as weird and varied as that of any land. It is astonishingly convincing, too, from the story of King Grollo and his wicked daughter, who came from the Britain across the seas, the Bluebeard legend, the Arthurian legend, which Bretons claim as their own, as do Britons, to those less incredible tales of the Corsairs of St. Malo and the exploits of Duguesclin and Surcouf.
enlarge-imageThe Breton Tongue
There is a quaint Breton saying referring to little worries, which runs thus: “When the wind blows up from the sea, I turn my barrel to the north; when it blows down from the hills, I turn my barrel to the south.” “Andwhen it blows all four ways at once?” “Why, then I crawl under the barrel.”
This is exactly the Breton’s attitude toward life to-day, but he finds a deal of consolation in his legends and songs of the past, and in his ruffled moments they serve to put him in a good humour again. This is something more than mere superstition, it is a philosophical turn of mind, and that is good for a man. The heroes of legend are frequently those of history. One may cite Joan of Arc with relation to old France, and Duguesclin in Brittany. There is a difference, of course, and it is wide, but the comparison will serve, as there is no other character in all the history of Brittany—unless it be that of Duguay-Trouin, the Corsair of St. Malo—who stands out so distinctly in the popular mind as does Duguesclin, “the real Breton.”
There is none in his own country, however illiterate he may be, and the Breton peasant, in some parts, is notoriously illiterate, who knows not this hero’s name and glory. Still more deeply rooted are the old folk-lore superstitions which have come down through the ages by word of mouth, no doubt with the accruing additions of time.
Morlaix is the very centre of a land of mystery,tradition, and superstition. Among these superstitious legends, “Jan Gant y tan,” as it is known by its Breton title, stands out grimly.
Jan, it seems, is a species of demon who carries by night five candles on the five fingers of each hand, and waves them wildly about, calling down wrath upon those who may have offended him.
Another is to the effect that hobgoblins eat the cream which rises on milk at night.
Yet another superstition is that the call of the cuckoo announces the year of one’s marriage or death.
Another, and perhaps the most curious of all, is that, if an infant by any chance gets his clothes wet at certain pools or fountains, he will die within a year, but he will live long years if he fall in, yet is able to preserve his garments from all dampness.
When one drinks of the Fountain of De Krignac three times within the hour, says the peasant of Plougasnou, and is not cured of the fever, let him abandon all thoughts of a remedy and prepare for death.
There are two legends associated with Brittany which are little known. Both relate to Bluebeard. This legend is of Eastern origin,as far as concerns the story of the man who slew his wives by dragging them about by the hair, ultimately decapitating them; but the French Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Learning evolves a sort of modern parallel as another setting for the same apocryphal story. It concerns a certain Trophime, the daughter of a Duke of Vannes, in the sixth century. She was married to the Lord of Gonord, whose castle was situated on Mont Castanes, and was the eighth wife of her husband. He killed her because she discovered the bodies of her seven predecessors; but her sister Anne prayed to St. Gildas, who came with her two brothers to the rescue. St. Gildas restored Trophime to life, and the Bluebeard of Gonord and his castle were swallowed up by the earth.
The origin of the story has always been in doubt, but the generally accepted theory is that Perrault founded the tale on the history of Gilles de Laval, Seigneur de Rais.
The Academy, however, destroys all this early conjecture in favour of the Gilles de Laval affair. Since Gilles de Laval was a kinsman of the Dukes of Brittany, the following is given as his claim to having played the part, though, as the report of the Academy goes onto say, De Laval proved himself to be but a fanatical sorcerer.
enlarge-imageGilles de Laval, after an engraving of the fifteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale.Gilles de Laval, after anengraving of the fifteenth century in theBibliothèque Nationale.
Gilles de Laval, after anengraving of the fifteenth century in theBibliothèque Nationale.
Gilles de Laval was born in 1404, and was a member of the family of Laval-Montmorency. He was handsome, well born, rich, and a most valiant soldier, and one of the warmest supporters of Joan of Arc, whom he defended against all who spoke ill of her, constituting himself her personal champion. He fought valiantly with the “Maid,” and was made a marshal of France when twenty-six years of age. He was very wealthy, and he doubled his possessions when he married at the early age of sixteen. His extravagances, however, were greater than his riches. He had a refined taste, and loved illuminated manuscripts, stamped Spanish leather, Flemish tapestries, Oriental carpets, gold and silver plate, music, and mystery plays. After peace was made, he and his wife retired to their castles and lands in the Vendée, whereGilles soon found himself hopelessly in debt. He had to find money somehow, for he was of a fine, open-handed disposition, and had never denied himself anything. It was only natural in that century that he should turn his thoughts toward alchemy and the philosopher’s stone.
Francesco Prelati, an Italian with a reputation as a magician and a maker of gold, was installed, with all his alchemist’s apparatus, in Gilles’s castle; but when he was asked to make gold, he confided to his patron that it would be necessary to summon the aid of the devil, and that for this purpose the blood of young children was absolutely required. The two then scoured the country round for children, whom they murdered with horrible rites, until at last their crimes became so notorious that they were arrested and tried at Nantes. Gilles de Laval and his accomplice were accused of murdering no fewer than twelve hundred children, and were tried for sorcery and found guilty. The Lord of Laval was strangled, and his body was burned; but Francesco Prelati, as a mere vulgar sorcerer, was burned alive.
At Saint Cast in the Côtes du Nord, one hears vague and fabulous reports from the natives, even to-day, of a pirate ship—a veritable sister ship to those of Duguay-Trouin of St. Malo—named thePerillonand commanded by one Besnard, known as the terror of the seas. Like other songs of seafarers of the days gone by, that concerning the terror of the seas is good enough to incorporate into the text of some rattling story of pirates and corsairs, such as boys—and some grown-ups—the world over like. Another popular Breton air was known as “Biron ha D’Estin” (“Byron and D’Estaing”), and had to do with the war in America. Another was the “Chant du Pilote,” and had for its subject the combat of theSurveillanteand the forts at Quebec in 1780.
Of the same period was the “Corsairs’ Song,” which is very well known throughout Upper Brittany even to-day, beginning thus:
“Le trente-un du mois d’août.”
“Le trente-un du mois d’août.”
Throughout Upper Brittany also one hears the old housewives still mumbling the old words and air of the song current in the times of Francis the First.
It was when the prince was treating for his release from captivity that the words first took shape and form:
“Quand le roi départit de France,Vive le roi!À la male heure il départit,Vive Louis!À la male heure il départit (bis).. . . . . . . . . .Il départit jour de dimanche.. . . . . . . . . .Je ne suis pas le roi de France.. . . . . . . . . .Je suis un pauvre gentilhommeQui va de pays en pays.. . . . . . . . . .Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.”
“Quand le roi départit de France,Vive le roi!À la male heure il départit,Vive Louis!À la male heure il départit (bis).. . . . . . . . . .Il départit jour de dimanche.. . . . . . . . . .Je ne suis pas le roi de France.. . . . . . . . . .Je suis un pauvre gentilhommeQui va de pays en pays.. . . . . . . . . .Retourne-t-en vite à Paris.”
TO-DAYthe Bretons are the most loyal of all the citizens of the great republic of France. In reality they are a most democratic people, though they often affect a devotion for old institutions now defunct. They may be a superstitious race, but they are not suspicious, although they have marked prejudices. When thoroughly understood, they are both likable and lovable, though their aspect be one of a certain sternness and aloofness toward the stranger. Their weapons are all in plain view, however, like the hedgehog’s; there is nothing concealed to thwart one’s desires for relations with them.
Their country, their climate, and their environment have much to do with their character, manners, and customs; and environment—as some one may have said before—is the greatest influence at work in shaping the attitude of a people toward an outsider, and everyone is still an outsider to a Breton, be he French, English, or American.
The Breton is really a gayer person than his expression leads one to suppose. Madame de Sévigné wrote, with some assurance, as was her wont: “You make me prefer the gamesomeness of our Bretons to the perfumed idleness of the Provençals.”
Certainly, to one who knows both races, the comparison was well made. It is a case of doing mischief against doing nothing.
Brittany has not Normandy’s general air of prosperity, and indeed at times there is a very near approach to poverty and distress, and then it is bruited abroad in the public prints that the fisheries have proved a failure.
The Breton farming peasant, however, is not the poverty-stricken wretch that he has sometimes been painted. He lives humbly, and eats vast quantities of potatoes and bread, little meat, some fish, always a salad, and, usually, a morsel of cheese, but he eats it off a cleanly scrubbed bare board and from clean and unchipped plates.
In his stable, such few belongings in the form of live stock as he has are well fed and contented, and his chickens and ducks and pigs and cows are as much a pride and profit to him asto the peasant of other parts; but, after all, Brittany is not a land of milk and honey. The peasant lives in the atmosphere of dogged, obstinate labour, but he draws a competence from it, and it is mostly those who live in the seacoast villages, and those who will huddle themselves in and about the large towns and ports, such as Quimper and Brest, that are ever in want, and then only because of some untoward, unexpected circumstance.
Agriculture and the business of the sea are closely allied in Brittany. Hundreds upon hundreds of young men work in the winter upon farms far inland, and come down to the sea with the coming of February and March, to ship in some longshore fishing-smack, or even to go as far away as Newfoundland, the Orkneys, or to Iceland.
This gives not only a peculiar blend of character, but also a peculiar cast of countenance to the Breton; he is a sort of half-land and half-sea specimen of humanity, and handy at the business of either.
In many ports, the Breton struggles continually against shifting sand,—sand which is constantly shifting when piled in banks on the seashore, and becomes of the nature of quicksand when lying beneath the water wherethe Breton moors his lobster-pots. Between the two, he is constantly harassed, and until the off season comes has little of that gaiety into which he periodically relaxes. Every one will remark that the aspect of both men and women is sombre and dark, even though their spontaneous gaiety and dress on the feast of a patron saint or at a great pardon gives one the impression of gladness.
One sees this when on the great holidays the Breton peasant is moved to song, and chants such lines as the following, which more nearly correspond in sentiment to “We won’t go home till morning” than anything else that can be thought of.
“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;Ils gagnent plus dans une semaineQu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.J’aime Jeanne ma femme!J’aime Jeanne ma femme!Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”
“J’ai deux grands bœufs dans mon étable,J’ai deux grands bœufs marqués de rouge;Ils gagnent plus dans une semaineQu’ils n’en ont couté, qu’ils n’en ont couté.J’aime Jeanne ma femme!J’aime Jeanne ma femme!Eh bien! j’aimerais mieux la voir mourir,Que de voir mourir mes bœufs.”
Doubtless there is not so much hard-heartedness about the sentiment as is expressed by the words, which, to say the least and the most, are not wholly up to the standard of “love, cherish, and protect.”
Once in awhile one sees the type of man who is known among his fellows asBreton des plus Bretons. Like his Norman brother, the Breton in the off season works hard playing dominoes or cards in the taverns, where one reads on a sign over the door thatJean X donne à boire et à manger, that is, if the sign be not in Breton, which more often than not it is.
The landlord does not exactly “give” his fare; he exchanges it for copper sous, but he caters for the inner man at absurdly small prices, and accordingly is well patronized, in spite of his refusal of credit.
Bowls is the national game of Brittany, having a greater hold upon the simple-minded Breton, particularly in the neighbourhood of the Lannion, than any other amusement. No respectably ambitious inn in all Brittany is without its bowling-alley. As a distraction, it is mild and harmless, and withal good exercise, as we all know.
The religious fervour of the Breton folk has been remarked of all who know them howsoever slightly. It is universal, and, if it be more apparent in one place than any other, it is in the Department of Finistère, and it is not in the cities and towns that it reaches its greatestheight, but mostly in the country-side, or on the seacoast among the labourers and the fisher-folk.
The religion of Brittany to-day is of the people and for the people. It is one of the great questions of the world to-day, but from a dogmatic point of view it shall have no discussion here. Suffice it to say that throughout France, with the numerous great, and nearly always empty, churches ever before one, one can but realize that the power of the Church is not what it once was.
The churchgoers are chiefly women; seldom, if ever, except on a great feast-day, are the churches filled with a congregation at all representative of the population of the parish, and even in the great cathedrals the same impression nearly always holds good.
In Brittany, the case is somewhat different, in the country districts at least, and even at Roscoff, Quimper, Vannes, and Rennes, where there are great cathedrals. In Brittany, in every parish church and at every wayside shrine, is almost always to be found not only a little knot of devoutly kneeling peasants, but, on all occasions of mark, a congregation overflowing beyond the doors. What this all signifies, as before said, is no concern of the writerof this book. It is simply a recorded state of affairs, and, judging from the attitude of the people themselves—when seen on the spot—toward the subject of religion, the most liberal thinker would hardly consider that here in Brittany religion was anything else than spontaneous devotion on the part of the people.
Of religion and priests, Brittany is full, but the people are not by any means priest-ridden, as many uncharitable and slack observers have asserted before now. No priest bids a Breton worship at any shrine. They do it of their own free will, and, though a churchman always officiates at the great pardons and festivals, the worshippers themselves are as much the performers of the ceremony as the priest.
In Brittany to-day the piece of money which passes current in most transactions, though in numbers it is infrequently handled by the traveller, isla pièce, the half-franc or ten-sous coin.
It is confusing when you are bargaining for a carriage to drive to some wayside shrine, to be told the price will be “deux pièces,” when—in Normandy—you have just formed the habit of realizing offhand thatdeux cent sousis the same thing as ten francs. It’s all very simple, when one knows what they are talking about, and the Breton likes still to think hisinstitutions are different from those of the rest of France, and so he goes on bargaining inpièces, when in other parts they are counting insous, which is even more confusing, or infrancs.
Most of the farmhouses of Brittany are constructed of stone and wood, with their roofs covered with a straw thatch. Of course this is a dangerous style of building to-day, as the authorities admit. Indeed a decree has gone forth in some parts forbidding the erection of any new straw-thatched building, and again in other parts against using any structure so built as a dwelling-house. The law is not absolutely observed, but it is by no means a dead letter, and the homely and picturesque thatched roof has now all but disappeared, except from the open country.
To enter the Breton peasant’s farmhouse, one almost invariably descends a step. The interior is badly lighted, and worse ventilated, but, as it is mostly the open-air life that the peasant and his family lead, perhaps this does not so much matter. Usually the house is composed of but one room, with a floor of hard-trodden earth. This is the dining-room, kitchen, and bedroom of all the family. The ceiling is composed of great rough-hewn rafters,sometimes even of trunks left with the bark on, and from it are hung the knives and forks and dishes, as in a ship’s cabin.
enlarge-imageYOUNG BRETONS B. McManus—1905
Furniture has been reduced to the most simple formula. Two or three great closed and panelled beds or bunks line one side of the wall, with perhaps a wardrobe, where the “Sunday-best” of the whole household is kept. Beneath the great beds is a series of oaken chests, and there the household linen is stored. These, with a long table, with a bench and a wide passageon either side, the great, yawning fireplace, with its crane and the inevitable highly polished pots and pans, form the furnishings of this remarkable apartment. All this is homely and strange, but it is comfortable enough for the occupants, if one does not mind being crowded, and it is the typical dwelling throughout Brittany.
Everywhere in the Breton country one sees oxen, cattle, and, above all, the horses of the indefatigable Breton race, “ready and willing to work and full of spirit in warfare.” So said Eugene Sue, and the same observation holds true to-day. None of the animals are so large or so fat as in the neighbouring provinces, but this is not because of malnutrition or because they are ill-tended. The cows of Brittany are by no means such plump, dainty animals as the cows of the Cotentin, and the Breton horses are certainly undersized when compared to the Norman sires and the great-footed Percherons, but one and all possess good qualities purely their own, and one thing above all should be noted,—Brittany is exceedingly rich grazing country, if not agricultural.
enlarge-imageFrom the ARTIST’S SKETCH BOOK.
Much of the local character is shown in the dress of the people, and throughout the country-side and the seacoast villages alike bothmen and women show that remarkable attention to dress which marks the strong individuality of the race,—individuality which has come down through the ages, and endures to this day in very nearly, if not quite all, its original aspect. One knows this dress through photographic reproductions, and from having occasionally seen it on the comic opera stage, but actually to live among such picturesquely dressed folk is like a step back into the past.
enlarge-imageLA COIFFE POLKA—The Smallest Coiffe in Brittany B. McM. 1905
The costumes of Brittany are greatly varied, but all look theatrical, and many of them are remarkably embroidered in multicoloured braid. On all great occasions, feast-days and fairs, on Sundays and on the days of the pardons, many ancient costumes, not modern reproductions, are seen. Particularly is this to be noted at Pont l’Abbé, Pont Aven, and elsewhere in the far west. The coifs of the women and the embroidered waistcoats and velvet-ribboned hats of the men mark them as a species of Frenchmen different from their Norman brethren; lovers of fanciful dress and customs quite Southern in gorgeousness, and not the least like the colder fashions of other dwellers in the same latitude.
At Quimper is an interesting Ethnological Museum, where one may study the subject at length, and in the town one may buy fabrics and stuffs and articles of wearing apparel fashioned in the genuine Breton manner.
The greatest activity of life in Brittany is in the coast towns, for there the populace has for the longest time been in touch with the ideas of an advanced civilization.
enlarge-imageIroning CoifsIroning Coifs
Ironing Coifs
By the very geographic position of Brittany this was inevitable, as the country was not in the direct path of any great current of commerce,and had no great navigable river, except the Loire, which bordered it upon the south. There had been malicious critics of things Breton before him, but there could have been no real justification for the lament of Paul St. Victor, who must have had an exceedinglybad dinner at his inn when he delivered himself of the following:
“Breton dialect is full of barbarisms, and Brittany is not even a healthy country for painters. It is a land of monasteries and dull routine; the same types and the same costumes; no men, no women, all Bretons, all of Brittany.”
As a race, the Breton may well be summed up as follows: They are the descendants of the men of a primitive epoch, from whom they inherit traits which even time has not entirely eradicated. Their intuitions are correct, and their convictions profound; their will tenacious, and their energies equal to all that may be demanded of them. They are proud, truthful, courageous, intrepid, hospitable, and religious.
The manufacturing industry throughout Brittany is practically null, if one except the work of the great arsenals and ship-building ports, and the production of such articles of local consumption as sail-cloth.
Flax and hemp are grown in considerable quantities, but the ordinary crops of cereals rise to nothing like the proportions of those reared in Normandy or Perche. The Breton is strong on bee-keeping, however, and keenly watches the busy workers of his hives as theygather their harvest from the abundant crop of wild flowers covering the hillsides.
enlarge-imageBreton TypesBreton Types
Breton Types
The Breton communes are of vast extent compared with those of other parts of France, but the population is scattered. Gathered around the parish church are the dwellings of the market-towns of three, four, or five hundred inhabitants or more. Upon the whole, Brittany is not thinly peopled, the mean of its population exceeding that of most of the other provinces of France. Whatever the aborigines were, whether of Indo-Germanique type or of a species hitherto unplaced, the present Breton population has been developed along lines close to those of Britain. And the Bretons are not far behind, and herein undoubtedly lies the charm of Brittany for the English-speaking traveller.
Writing of his stay at Guingamp,—which is about the dividing line where one passes from the zone of the French tongue to that of the Breton, where one is frequently to hear the short exclamation, “I do not understand you,”—Arthur Young tells us of putting up at a roadside inn “where the hangings over his bed were full of cobwebs and spiders.” The inn-keeper remarked to him that he had “a superb English mare,” and wished to buy it from him. “I gave him half a dozen flowers of French eloquence for his impertinence,” said the wittytraveller, “when he thought proper to leave me and my spiders in peace.” “Apropos of the breed of horses in Lower Brittany,” he continues, “they are capital hunters, and yet my ordinary little English mare was much admired, while every stable round about is filled with a pack of these little pony stallions sufficient to perpetuate the local breed for long to come.”
To the humble inn—one of the regular posting-houses on the great highroad from Paris to Brest—he is not so complimentary. “This villainous hole,” said he, “which calls itself a great house, is the best inn of the town, at which marshals of France, dukes, peers, countesses, and so forth, must now and then, by the accidents to which long journeys are subject, have found themselves. What are we to think of a country that has made, in the eighteenth century, no better provision for its travellers?” In this our author was clearly a faultfinder, or at least he was unfortunate in not living at a later day, for the above is certainly not true of the inns of France to-day, though it may truthfully be said that, even to-day, the inns of Brittany are alittlebackward, but it is not true of the Hôtel de France at Guingamp, which has even a dark room for the kodaker, and afosséfor the motor-car traveller.
WHATthe cider-apple crop is to Normandy, that the fisheries are to Brittany, and more, for the fisheries turn over more money by far than the cider of Normandy, which is grown purely for home consumption. The Breton young person of the male sex takes to the sea in the little pilchard-boats, the three-masters of the deep-sea fishery, or the whalers, for the purpose of earning his livelihood, and also to secure a prescribed term of exemption from military or naval service. With such an object, it is no wonder that the industry employs so many hands, and has become so important and considerable in its returns. Of course the geographical position of the country has more than a little to do with this, and also the stony soil of the country-side, suggesting the harvest of the sea as a more ample crop.
In Brittany, the sea nourishes the land, though perhaps but meagrely.
enlarge-imageDouarnenezDouarnenez
Douarnenez
From the mouth of the Loire, around Finistère to Lannion, thousands upon thousands of the inhabitants live by the harvest of the sea, whereas, if it were not for this, they might be forced to emigrate, or to hie themselves to the large towns, there to herd in unsanitary quarters, which is worse.
The pilchard fishery is practically at its best directly off the Quiberon peninsula, opposite Lorient and Concarneau. It is important also just offshore from Audierne, Douarnenez, and Camaret.
It is well to recall just what the sardine really is, inasmuch as we mostly buy any “little fishes boiled in oil,” which a pushful grocer may thrust upon us. The “corporal’s stripe,” or the “cavalry corporal,” as the sardine is known in France, is quite a different species from the “armed policeman,” or common sea-garden herring. The Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic, and some parts of the Mediterranean are its home. It winters between 50 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude, in a zone where the temperature is constant, but from March to October it emigrates toward the north. Sometimes the future sardines are known as pilchards; on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy ashareng de Bergues; as sardines inBrittany; asroyanin Charente; and assardaandsardinyolain the Pyrénées Orientales.
The best and most common method of preserving the sardine is by slightly heating the oil before placing it with the fish in those little tin boxes known the world over; then the boxes are soldered and put into a double boiler and boiled for the better part of an hour, when the exceedingly simple process is finished. So simple is it, and so readily accomplished without a great capital investment, that the wonder is that imitations of the “real Brittany sardines” are not more successful elsewhere. Up to this time, however, nothing rivals the Breton product.
Each year, at the feast of St. Jean, the barques set out from the various ports, all richly decorated, and often sped on their way by a religious ceremony, at which a priest officiates and gives his blessing.
The profits vary considerably one year from another, as may be supposed. The catch is by no means constant. Its ordinary receipts approximate twelve million francs, and, when it drops below this figure, distress is likely to ensue, particularly if a hard winter falls upon Brittany, which in truth it seldom does.
The little fish return each year, their feeding-groundscarcely varying thirty miles in any direction. Thus, in season, the boats with their red sails and blue and brown nets put off for the same spots where they took their catches last year, only to find that the habits of the sardines have not in the least changed. Five or six men to a boat is the average crew, and, if the wind be contrary, their speed is much the same by means of oars. Once arrived on the ground, the skipper of the boat throws overboard at intervals some handfuls ofrogueas a bait; this is a paste composed of the roe of the cod, and the only drawback is that its cost is great. It comes mostly from Norway, and, after passing through many intermediate hands, finally reaches the Breton fisherman, who pays from sixty to seventy francs per hundred kilos. When the price rises above this figure, the ingenious skipper fabricates a substitute, a mixture of the real article and a local vegetable product known asfarine d’arachides. Its results are not so good as those from the real article, and the local fishermen have a saying which is doubtless so true as to have become a proverb: “One must bait with fish to catch a fish.” Moreover, the fish caught by this means do not rank as a first quality product in the markets of the Breton fishing ports, owing tothe after-effects on the fish, which shall be undefined here. It may be well to recall the fact, however, and, if you get a sardine which is not what you think it ought to be, and is too much like a bad oyster, you may depend upon it that it was caught withfarine d’arachides.
The Breton custom is to fish with buoyed nets, disdaining the drag-net, though occasionally the latter is used.
The buoyed nets merely scoop the surface of the water, but the drag-nets are sunk to a depth of from forty to fifty metres. When the skipper estimates that the net is full, or, at least, that he shall have a haul worthy of his trouble, all hands, singing as all sailor-folk do, pull the net inboard, and, with a clever turn, empty it of its freight of silver-scaled fish, which are forthwith scooped up and placed in great baskets. On the return to port, the fishermen still in harbour, the factory hands, and all the inhabitants who are not otherwise employed, even though they ought to be, to say nothing of curious peasant-folk from the inland towns, and always a generous sprinkling of tourists, and the inevitable American artist, are in waiting, curious as to the luck.
Here the dealers come and bargain for the catch. Thirty to thirty-five francs a thousandis usually the market price, and the choicest fish naturally sell first. Speculation comes in now and then, and a scare as to the prospect of the catch being too abundant is as common and as disastrous as the fear that it may not be large enough. Sometimes the price will fall as low as a franc and a half, and then come “trials without number for the sailors,” as an old fisherman told the writer. Certainly, if thirty francs a thousand be only a paying wage, a franc and a half must mean about the same as utter failure to the crew, who generally work the boat on shares.
The pilchard fishers have not forgotten the crisis of 1903, to combat the recurrence of which it was proposed to establish special schools for fishermen apprentices, and to forbid the use of the drag-net, and they are seeking a rearrangement of conditions whereby the returns may be more equally distributed among the workers than now. At the present time the owner—who fits out the boat—claims a third, and the skipper a third, the hands dividing the other third. According to this arrangement, the novice or apprentice receives an infinitesimal share.
As a Frenchman, a Breton of Quimper who was not in the sardine business, said to us:“Ces pauvres diables! Ils mériteraient mieux.” All of which is true, so let all well-wishers, who are fond of the “little fishes boiled in oil” at their picnic dinners, give a thought now and again to the Breton fisherman.
Besides the sardine fisheries, there is a considerable traffic from such ports as Tréguier, St. Malo, and Morlaix in the deep-sea fishery, and elsewhere in the mackerel and herring fishery in Icelandic waters and the North Sea, and these give a prosperity that would otherwise be wanting.
Statistics are dry reading, and so they are not given here, but there are some curious things with regard to the laws regulating the offshore and deep-sea fisheries of France, just as there are with respect to the line fishing, by which method one can legally take fish only if he actually hold his rod or line in his hand: he may not lay it on the ground beside him and doze until an unusually frisky gudgeon wakes him up.
On all of the French fishing-craft, which sail to the Banks or to Iceland for cod, French salt must be used, and all masters of fishing-craft must keep a supplementary log or diary relating to the takings of fish alone.
In deep-sea fishing the law prescribes thata vessel which is fitted out for the fishing-banks must remain on the ground a certain length of time. This is to preclude the possibility of a decreasing catch, it is to be presumed, as many a fisherman has been known, before now, to give up the labour with holds half-filled simply because he had come upon a meagre feeding-ground. It seems a wise precaution, and is another of those parental acts which the French government is always undertaking on behalf of its children. There is still the whalebone catch to reckon with, for the French government specializes this industry, and offers a bonus of seventy francs a ton displacement on leaving port for all French equipments, and fifty francs per ton displacement upon returning after the term prescribed.
ATAncenis, the Loire, that mighty river which rises near the frontier of Garde, a Mediterranean department, enters Brittany on its way to the Atlantic. For more than nine hundred kilometres above this point, the Loire has been navigable for such fresh-water craft as usually are found upon great waterways, and, having passed Orleans, Blois, and Tours, and broadened out into a great, wide, shallow stream, it is to be reckoned as one of the world’s great rivers. Mostly its appearance is that of a broad, tranquil, docile stream, with scarce enough depth of water to make a respectable current, leaving its bed with its bars of sand and pebbles bare to the sky. This lack of depth, except at occasional flood, is the principal and obvious reason for the comparative absence of water-borne traffic.
At the times of the great freshets there are twenty-three feet or more registered on thehuge black and white scale of the bridge at Ancenis, and again it falls to less than a fourth of that height, and then there is a mere rivulet of water trickling through the broad channel at Chaumont, at Blois, or at Orleans.
In the olden time, as one passed from Anjou into Brittany, by way of the valley of the Loire, he came to a great barrier across the road,—a veritable frontier post, with a custom-house and examiners, as if one were passing into a foreign country. The Revolution changed all this, and now nothing but another of that vast family of great, white departmental boundary-posts marks the dividing line between the Maine et Loire and the Loire-Inférieure, the border departments between the old province of the Counts of Anjou and that of the Breton dukes.
Just above Ancenis, one passes vineyard after vineyard, and château after château follows rapidly in turn,—all very delightful, as Pepys would have said. Not so the bridge at Ancenis, quite the ugliest wire-rope affair to be seen on the Loire, and one is only too glad to leave it behind, though it is with a real regret that he parts from Ancenis itself.
Ancenis is one of those blessed spots possessing a château; it is endowed with a wonderfully picturesque situation, and, moreover, iscapable of catering for the inner man in so satisfactory a manner that one can but put it down in his books as one of the spots to be favoured. The Barons of Ancenis were a long and picturesque line, and their local fame has by no means perished. The old-time château, constructed in the fifteenth century, was the masterwork of a famous Angevin architect, Jean Lespine by name. To-day this fine building, or what is left of it, has become an Ursuline boarding-house. Much is still left to tell the story of its former greatness, but it is not so accessible as one would like.
The most that can be remarked is a great doorway flanked by two towers, with overpowering machicolations, another smaller tower,—atourelle, the French themselves would call it,—and a ruined pavilion, where, in 1468, Francis, Duke of Brittany, signed a treaty with Louis XI. On the market-house of Ancenis is superimposed a sort of a belfry which, seen in conjunction with the low-lying river-bank, imparts a low-country aspect to the town. The old streets of Ancenis give shelter to many fine mediæval houses, of which the most notable is perhaps the old “house of the Croix de Lorraine.”
Below Ancenis, navigation is not so difficult,but the river current is more strong. For a long distance, on the right bank, extends a dike, carrying the roadway beside the river for a matter of a hundred kilometres. This is one of the charms of travel by the Loire. When you see any animation on its bosom, save an occasional fishing-punt, neither it nor its occupant usually very animated, it is one of those great flat-bottomed ferry-boats, with a square sail hung on a yard amidships, such as Turner always made an accompaniment to his Loire landscapes.
Conditions of traffic thereon have not changed much since those days. Whenever one sees a barge or a boat worthy of classification with those on the rivers of the east or north, or of the canals, it is only about a quarter of the usual size, so, altogether, in spite of its great navigable length, the waterway of the Loire is more valuable as a picturesque and healthful element of the landscape than as a commercial artery. Below Nantes is the “section maritime,” which from Nantes to the sea is a matter of some sixty kilometres. Here the boats increase in number and size. They are known as lighters, barges, and tenders, and go down with the river current and return on the incoming ebb, for here the river is tidal.
From this one gathers that the Loire, so noble and magnificent, is the most aristocratic river of France, and so, too, it is with respect to its associations of the past.
It has not the grandeur of the Rhône when the spring freshets from the Jura and the Swiss lakes have filled it to its banks; and it has not the burning activity of the Seine, as it bears its thousands of boat-loads of produce and merchandise to and from market; it has not the prettiness of the Thames, or the legendary aspect of the Rhine; but, in a way, it combines something of the features of all, and has, in addition, a tone that is all its own, as it sweeps the horizon through its countless miles of ample curves, and holds within its embrace all that is best of mediæval and Renascence France, the period which built up the later monarchy and—who shall say not?—the present prosperous nation.
The Loire is essentially a river of other days. Truly, as Mr. James has said, “it is the very model of a generous, beneficent stream.... A wide river which you may follow by a wide road is excellent company.” The Frenchman himself is more flowery. “It is the noblest river of France. Its basin is immense, magnificent.” All of which is true, too. For a goodbit of local colour of this region, one should read Chapter V. of “The Regent’s Daughter,” by Dumas, wherein the willing Gaston, in the midday sunshine of a winter’s day, made his way from Nantes to Paris, “travelling slowly as far as Oudon opposite Champtoceaux.” “At Oudon he halted and put up at the Char-Couronne, an inn with windows overlooking the highroad.” Some stirring events took place here, but the reader is referred to the pages of Dumas for the details.
Oudon, however, will not detain the cursory traveller of to-day, even if he deigns to visit it at all.
Champtoceaux, on the other hand, though only a small town of thirteen hundred inhabitants, does awaken interest. Formerly it belonged to the Counts of Anjou, and then to the Dukes of Brittany.
Its site is most picturesque; it stands on a mound some two hundred feet above the Loire. There are two fine mediæval churches, and an old château, which, with the ruins of the ancient fortified castle, now forms a part of the domain of a M. de la Touche, who will kindly permit the visitor to inspect the details of this ancient feudal stronghold.
The dismantled old walls are covered withmoss and lichens, and their picturesqueness is of that quality that painters love to put on canvas. The wonder is that Champtoceaux has not become a new artists’ sketching-ground, such as are so often discovered—or rediscovered—throughout France. Perhaps it is because of its distance from Paris, for your artist-painter, be he French, English, or American, dearly loves the streets of the Latin Quarter, and, as a rule, prefers Fontainebleau and its circle of artist colonies to going farther afield.
At last one beholds what a Frenchman has called the “tumultuous vision of Nantes.” To-day the very ancient and historic city which grew up from the Portus Nannetum and the Condivientum of the Romans is indeed a veritable tumult of chimneys, masts and smokestacks, and locomotives. But all this will not detract one jot from its reputation of being one of the most delightful of provincial capitals, and the smoke and activity of its port only tend to accentuate the note of colour, which in the whole itinerary of the Loire has been but pale.
The former reputation of Nantes as a little capital where gaiety and wealth came in abundance is correct for to-day, but a comparison is interesting. Here is a reminiscence of oldstage-coaching days, when the post took four days to make the journey from Paris:
“The neighbourhood of the theatre is magnificent, all the streets being at right angles and of white stone. One is in doubt as to whether the Hôtel Henri IV. is not the finest inn in Europe.” (It must have disappeared since those days, but really its reputation still lives in any one of the three leading hotels.) “Dessein’s” (also disappeared) “at Calais is larger, but is not built, fitted up, or furnished like this, which is new. It cost nearly five hundred thousand francs, and contains sixty bedrooms. It is without comparison the first inn of France, and very cheap withal.
“The theatre must have cost a like sum, and, when its seats are full, holds 120 louis d’or. The ground that the inn is built upon cost nine francs a foot, and elsewhere in the city one may pay as much as fifteen francs. This ground value induces them to build so high as to be destructive of beauty.” Unquestionably this last observation was quite true then, as it is now, but Nantes nevertheless fills very nearly every qualification of a well-laid-out and attractive city.
To some Nantes will be reminiscent of Venice, or at least some Dutch city, for its fiveriver branches are continually crossing and recrossing one’s path in most bewildering fashion, and bridges confront one at every turn.
The city’s attractions are many, from its great cathedral and its château-fortress, enclosing a beautiful edifice wherein once lived the Duchess Anne, to its great hotels, cafés, and shops of modern times.
Five great events of history stand forth prominent in the memory of the very name of Nantes: the struggle of John of Montfort against Charles of Blois for the ducal power; the affairs of the League; the famous Edict; the Cellamare conspiracy; and the rising of the Vendeans and the rascally Carrier’s retaliation in Revolutionary days.
Each and every one of these were vivid and bloody enough to furnish inexhaustible material for a novelist of the Dumas school, should he rise in the future, for the half has not yet been used. It was in the Place of Bouffay that that execution of the Breton conspirators took place, of which we read in the graphic pages of Dumas. Gaston, who sought to deliver his former companions, was posting along the road to Nantes with their reprieve safely guarded. Before the age of steam and electricity, news travelled slowly, and Sèvres, Versailles, Rambouillet,Chartres, Mans, and Angers were then far apart. But the faithful Gaston travelled fast, one of the bystanders at Rambouillet calling to him: “If you go at that pace, you will kill more than one team between here and Nantes.”
Gradually he learned that a “courier of the minister’s” had passed that way. This was the beginning of what Dumas called the “tragedy of Nantes.” The event was historical, and Dumas’s account was most dramatic, yet did not differ greatly from the facts. Gaston arrived too late. Talhouet was dead, and the Place of Bouffay reeked with the blood of the conspirators, who, guilty though they were, had received the pardon of the Regent. The cry of De Conedic, as he bent his head to the block, still echoes down through history: “See how they recompense the services of faithful soldiers! Ye cowards of Bretagne,” he cried, as the sword of the executioner fell upon him. Ten minutes afterward the square was empty. One of the corpses still held a crumpled paper in his hand,—it was the pardon of the other four, for the bearer had arrived too late. Thus finished “the tragedy of Nantes.”
Though this part of Brittany has the reputation of being the least illiterate of any, as lateas the beginning of the last quarter of the nineteenth century might be seen at Nantes the sign of the public scrivener, which read: